Adverbs

Adverbs

In Dutch, adverbs are hard to distinguish from adjectives.

Adverbs do not have inflections. In ‘’De man rent sloom’’, sloom can be translated as both ‘’slow’’ and ‘’slowly’’. Many adverbs are used in phrases where they belong to the adjective, such as ‘’heel’’ (very), ‘’nogal’’ (quite/rather), ‘’hier’’ (here), ‘’altijd’’ (always), ‘’waar’’ (where), etc.:

Een heel erg stoere vent (a very tough guy)
Het boek is nogal vreemd (the book is rather strange)

Some prepositions can be used as adverbs such as ‘’op’’, ‘’aan’’, ‘’over’’, etc:

We houden vast wat geld over (we probably will keep some money)

Pronominal adverbs are used with the addition of words ‘’er’’, ‘’daar’’, ‘’waar’’, etc., and with an adverb made with a preposition such as ‘’daarmee’’, ‘’waarmee’’, ‘’waarnaar’’, etc.:

Dit is het horloge waarnaar we gezocht hebben (This is the watch we have been looking for)
Het is herkenbaar dat we daarmee veel bereikt hebben (it is recognizable that we have achieved a lot with this)

Adverbial phrases have the same function:

De oude man liep over de brug, dus we konden hem amper zien (The old man walked over the bridge, so we could hardly see him)